winds blew from all the world’s four corners, the ship moved,
and as the dying man’s mind swayed, the whole world swayed,
but the old captain stood erect on his white prow
and cupped his hands above his eyes, scanned all the sea, 1310
and his heart yearned for his most faithful final friend:
“I shall not leave until you come with your gold cap,
your playthings in your hands, and climb this icy deck;
our voyage is most long and the mind wants to play”.
As thus he murmured, casting far his sun-glad glance, 1315
a warm soft body suddenly crouched beside his feet,
and when the great death-archer looked he saw entwined
and panting there a curly-haired sly Negro boy;
sweat from his armpits dripped, and in his palms he held
seeds of all kind: birds, beasts, trees, sorrows, joys and men; 1320
he also held the mind’s huge eggs: dread gods and myths,
great thoughts and virtues, freedoms, loves, and gallant deeds.
The seven-souled man saw the Tempter and laughed slyly,
their cunning glances crossed and juggled in the air,
their laughter spread to their ears’ roots, and their long locks, 1325
the white, the black, caught fire and leapt in crystal air.
Thus the two comrades talked in silence, eye to eye,
and as the Negro lad and the mind-spinner laughed,
both turned and caught in their eyes’ nets the crew, the ship,
the destitute and emerald sea, the mournful sun, 1330
all end and all beginning, present, future, past.
They played with the earth’s and the mind’s seeds at odd and even,
sometimes they merged and turned to a forked flame in sun,
sometimes the great world-mockers parted and laughed slyly.
At length the myth grew drowsy, curled by the hearth asleep, 1335
and the world folded its vast wings and dropped its head;
then the great hybrid mind cast tongues of flame and light,
soared high and plunged, rushed through the crossroads of the flesh,
and sat, almighty, on the body’s fivefold roads.
Its glance encircled the whole world, it laughed and thought: 1340
“I shall create men, towns, and gods, I shall rig ships,
I shall seize clay and wings and air to shape a world,
I shall seize clay and wings and air to shape all thoughts,
we’ll play in sunlight a brief hour and then push on.”
His mind now danced and cackled on the green-haired earth; 1345
glutted with loam, he scorned it, soared on high serenely
and blew to scatter life’s toy down the hollow winds.
“I’ll strip beasts of their armor, I’ll smash gods and men,
I’ll turn all thoughts once more to mud and wings and air,
I’ll flip my hands, and all great towns shall tumble down; 1350
good was the game we’ve played on the world’s emerald grass!”
Slowly the curly-headed black boy closed his eyes
and dropped his head upon his chest, then clasped his knees
and like a weary fledgling wrapped his wings for sleep.
In pity for the lad, the great ascetic stooped 1355
and fondled the thick lips and the drenched curly hair,
and then the Negro boy, that cunning charming spirit,
opened his dark eyes slightly, glanced at his old friend,
then shuddered as he saw the world-destroyer’s orbs.
They whirled like deep dark funnels where the whole world spun, 1360
within them all earth’s creatures danced, his comrades yelled,
and the snow-flagship with a roar hauled up its sails.
The mighty athlete slowly fondled his sly spirit, 1363
and his dark palms ate up its airy flesh with stealth;
its black cheeks sank, its deep sun-nourished eyes dropped out, 1365
its thick lips rotted, still unslaked, its ears disjoined,
its cold skull glittered, bald and smooth in the afterglow.
The frontier guard then smiled and hung the Negro boy
on the mid-mast as scarecrow for the lower world.
Slowly his glance caressed all things for the last time; 1370
the hour had come to fling his laughter in farewell,
and his throat rose and laughed, his frigate leapt erect,
figs and grape-clusters swayed on his ancestral masts,
the sailors seized their oars, the billows boomed and roared,
and all the women sang farewell to the lost world. 1375
The piper sat astride the prow and placed the mind’s
shade-smothered flute with skill against his breathless lips
till a faint tune rose distantly like a night shower
pelting with cackling laughter on a lover’s roof.
Erect by his mid-mast amid the clustered grapes, 1380
the prodigal son now heard the song of all return
and his eyes cleansed and emptied, his full heart grew light,
for Life and Death were songs, his mind the singing bird.
He cast his eyes about him, slowly clenched his teeth,
then thrust his hands in pomegranates, figs, and grapes 1385
until the twelve gods round his dark loins were refreshed.
All the great body of the world-roamer turned to mist,
and slowly his snow-ship, his memory, fruit, and friends
drifted like fog far down the sea, vanished like dew.
Then flesh dissolved, glances congealed, the heart’s pulse stopped, 1390
and the great mind leapt to the peak of its holy freedom,
fluttered with empty wings, then upright through the air
soared high and freed itself from its last cage, its freedom.
All things like frail mist scattered till but one brave cry
for a brief moment hung in the calm benighted waters: 1395
“Forward, my lads, sail on, for Death’s breeze blows in a fair wind!”
Epilogue
O Sun, great Eastern Prince, your eyes have brimmed with tears,
for all the world has darkened, all life swirls and spins,
and now you’ve plunged down to your mother’s watery cellars.
She’s yearned for you for a long time, stood by her door
with wine for you to drink, a lamp to light your way: 5
“Dear Son, the table’s spread, eat and rejoice your heart;
here’s forty loaves of bread and forty jugs of wine
and forty girls who drowned to light your way like lanterns;
your pillows are made of violets and your bed of roses,
night after night I’ve longed for you, my darling son!” 10
But her black son upset the tables in great wrath,
poured all the wine into the sea, cast bread on waves,
and all the green-haired girls sank in the weeds, and drowned.
Then the earth vanished, the sea dimmed, all flesh dissolved,
the body turned to fragile spirit and spirit to air, 15
till the air moved and sighed as in the hollow hush
was heard the ultimate and despairing cry of Earth,
the sun’s lament, but with no throat or mouth or voice:
“Mother, enjoy the food you’ve cooked, the wine you hold,
Mother, if you’ve a rose-bed, rest your weary bones, 20
Mother, I don’t want wine to drink or bread to eat—
today I’ve seen my loved one vanish like a dwindling thought.”
THE END
SYNOPSIS OF THE ODYSSEY
Originally I had thought of preceding each book of the poem with a short “argument”, as in Milton’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, but I feared that the reader mig
ht eventually come to think of these not as the translator’s but as the poet’s original synopsis. Inevitably, especially in the later and more philosophical books, even the slightest exposition of events involves much individual interpretation, and though I have often discussed every aspect of the poem with the author, I have thought it best to relegate the synopsis to this Appendix where it may be acknowledged clearly as the translator’s and thus freer scope be given for those sections of the poem which will always remain open for philosophical or symbolical speculation. This synopsis is meant to assist the reader in obtaining a clearer perspective of the action, especially if he glances at the argument for each book before reading the book itself, and to help him systematize the philosophical thought entwined with a richness of episode, metaphor, and parable. He will often find incidents described in such a way as to include an interpretation. This synopsis, however, is in no way to be thought of even as an abstract substitute for the poem itself, especially in those parts where the symbols and allegories take on varied significance for each reader, and where the thought is instinctively and inseparably part of the poetic texture. Perhaps this précis may also be of some use later to scholars who might wish to make the necessary exhaustive comparative studies or to research into derivative sources.
PROLOGUE
The poem, appropriately, both opens and closes with an invocation to the sun, for the imagery of fire and light dominates the poem and bathes it iridescently with symbolic meaning. The central theme is boldly announced:
O Sun, my quick coquetting eye, my red-haired hound,
sniff out all quarries that I love, give them swift chase,
tell me all that you’ve seen on earth, all that you’ve heard,
and I shall pass them through my entrails secret forget
till slowly, with profound caresses, play and laughter,
stones, water, fire, and earth shall be transformed to spirit,
and the mud-winged and heavy soul, freed of its flesh,
shall like a flame serene ascend and fade in sun.
The sun symbolizes godhead, the ultimate purified spirit, for the central theme is the unceasing struggle which rages in animate and inanimate matter to burn away and cast off more and more of its dross until the rarefied spirit is gradually liberated and ascends toward its symbolical goal. Concomitant and contrapuntal themes are also announced: the laughter and joy that rise through and above tragedy; the freedom from all shackles which prudence and the comfortable virtues dictate, from all philosophical, ethical, and racial ties; the certainty that for each individual the phenomena of the universe are but the mind’s creations.. And from the beginning the poet strikes the tone which he maintains throughout: that of adventurous and dangerous exploration of both physical and spiritual worlds; a heroic, serious, yet ironic and playful braggadocio in the face of annihilation; the accents and the rhythms of folk song, the tall tale, fable and myth; the passionate yet laughing play of the poet’s imagination with his material as he casts off from all sure anchorage like a restless mariner and launches into a shoreless sea of no destination: “Ahoy, cast wretched sorrow off, prick up your ears—/I sing the sufferings and the torments of renowned Odysseus!”
BOOK I
Odysseus subdues a revolt in Ithaca. In Book XXII of Homer’s Odyssey, after Odysseus has killed the suitors of his wife with the aid of his son, Telemachus, his old nurse finds him amid the corpses “splattered with blood and filth, like a lion when he comes from feeding on some farmer’s bullock . . . a fearsome spectacle.” He forces twelve unfaithful maidservants to clean up the gory evidence of the massacre, then orders them strung up and hanged in the portico of the central courtyard. It is here that Kazantzakis has cut away Homer’s last two books and grafted the opening of his sequel, for his own first book begins abruptly with an “And,” as though he were continuing a previous sentence in Homer where Odysseus strides to his bath to cleanse his bloodstained body. Some incidents from Homer’s last two books, as the tender recognition and reconciliation scene with his wife, Penelope, are entirely omitted; other incidents are reshaped, as the recapitulation of his adventures, the first meeting with his father, and the angry uprising of his own people. As the new Odyssey unfolds, still other incidents in Homer are reshaped or given another interpretation.
The savage aspect of Odysseus terrifies Penelope, and he in turn feels nothing of the anticipated joy on beholding her. The widows of the men killed at Troy, and the fathers of the slain suitors, accompanied by the shades of the dead men, arouse the people to revolt and rush with torches toward the palace to burn it. Odysseus summons his son to help him put them down, speaks with contempt of both rabble and arrogant archons, and insists on the right of autocratic rule. But to Telemachus, a mildmannered youth who wants nothing more than to follow in traditional and conciliatory paths, his father now seems a stranger, harsh, cruel, and murderous. He wishes that this “savage butcher” had never returned from Troy. As they go to face the mob, Odysseus tells Telemachus of his meeting with Nausicaī and how he longed for her to become his son’s bride. He then confronts the mob, and by pretending to think his people have rushed up to welcome him, subdues them craftily with specious promises, then cows them until they kiss his hand and follow him obsequiously to the palace. There he dismisses them, then joins frightened Penelope in bed. Telemachus dreams that his father, in the form of an eagle, seizes him by the skull, soars with him into the sky to test and strengthen his daring, then drops him headlong.
Early next morning Odysseus explores his palace, taking an inventory of what the rapacious suitors have left, and nostalgically recalls some of his old adventures. He confers with his farmers about his fields, his cattle, his slaves, portions out jobs, sets his realm in order, then announces a great feast in honor of his return. Filling a jug with the suitors’ blood, he climbs a mountain to his ancestral graveyard, pours out a libation that his forefathers may drink and revive, dances with them on their graves, then climbs to the mountain top and views his island lovingly. On his descent, he stops by a humble basket-weaver to beg some food. Though he does not reveal who he is, he tells the old man that Odysseus has returned, but the basket-weaver is uninterested in the fate of kings, and concerns himself only with the simple needs of daily living, deplores ambition, and praises the common life, the proven verities, compliance to Death and Mother Earth. With arrogance, Odysseus upholds the life of individuality, revolt, and cunning, yet concedes that all life is vanity and that all roads are equally good.
Odysseus’ father, Laertes, who all his life has been as much a farmer and landsman as his son has been a sailor and adventurer, crawls out to his beloved fields and calls out to Mother Earth to take him at last. At dusk all gather to the great feast of their king. Among the revelers is Kentaur, a glutton and great drinker, broad-buttocked, barrel-bellied, splay-footed, a mountain of meat, sentimental, softhearted, affectionate. His particular friend is Orpheus, a poetaster and piper, cricket-shanked, scraggly, crosseyed, dream-taken and timid. When the feast begins and all wait for their long-lost master to pour a libation to the gods, Odysseus shocks them by proposing a toast to man’s dauntless mind. As the revelry progresses, the chief minstrel rises and sings of the three Fates which had blessed Odysseus in his cradle: Tantalus who bequeathed him his own forever unsatisfied heart, Prometheus who gave him the mind’s blazing brilliance, and Heracles who bathed him in the fire of the spirit’s laborious struggle toward purification. Reminded of these bequests, Odysseus in fury lashes out at himself for wishing to settle down safely and seek no further paths to knowledge and exploration. He knows he has a more primitive atavistic ancestor in his blood. His confession frightens his people, and Telemachus once more curses a father who seems to be all that is contradictory, restless, and unappeased, revolutionary yet autocratic, atavistic and savage. Odysseus calms his heart by walking down the seashore at night.
BOOK II
Odysseus leaves Ithaca forever. By the fireside the following night, O
dysseus tells his father, his wife, and his son that on his voyages Death had approached him in three deadly guises, (1) With Calypso life had seemed a dream, and he had been tempted to accept her gift of immortal youth, but an oar cast up by the sea recalled him to life once more. He built a ship and sailed away, but when he came in sight of his native land, a storm swept him off, and in delirium he visited the gods on Olympus, who crowded about him to admire his mortal and aging body. (2) Shipwrecked on Circe’s island, he was tempted to turn beast for love of her, to forget virtue and the spirit, and to wallow in fleshly delights, but one day the sight of some fishermen, a mother and her baby enjoying the simple comforts of food and drink, recalled him to life, its duties and delights. (3) Again he built a vessel, and again he was shipwrecked, but with Nausicaä he was tempted to lead a normal, unassuming life, the sweetest of all the masks of death. Although he abandoned Nausicaä also, he was determined to fetch her one day to be his son’s bride that she might breed him grandsons. When Odysseus finishes his tale, he realizes suddenly that his own native land is the most lethal mask of death, a confining prison with an aging wife and a prudent son.
Soon after, his father, Laertes, feeling the approach of death, crawls with his old nurse at daybreak to his orchard, bids his trees, his birds and beasts farewell, sows grain, then falls to earth himself like seed, and dies. Odysseus buries his father, then sends a ship with a great dowry to fetch Nausicaä for his son. His island seems to him a strange place now, for a new generation flourishes, and the town elders, with whom he had longed to confer, seem rotting, senile, timid. Odysseus decides to leave Ithaca forever. Several months later, in autumn, he finds Captain Clam, a grizzly and trustworthy old sea-wolf, and persuades him to leave also. Next he visits the bronzesmith, Hardihood, a red-haired, burly man from the mountains, sullen, secluded, with a stain like that of an octopus on his right cheek, and enlists his aid by promising to lead him to the god Iron, a superior new metal. A few days later, he finds Kentaur drunk in the middle of a road, and takes him also. Working by day and carousing by night, the four companions begin to build their vessel. Orpheus is attracted by their food and revelry, and Odysseus takes him on as a crew member to comfort them at times with song. The townspeople, fearing that all five men are demon-driven, persuade sorceresses to make a manikin in the shape of Odysseus, hammer it with nails and then cast it in the sea, but when Odysseus finds it, he laughs and throws it in the campfire for kindling. One day a stranger joins them, Granite, a brooding young man of noble bearing, a mountaineer of good family, who had killed his younger brother over a woman and now roams restlessly, burdened with guilt.